Publications & Testimony

Thomas Creech and…

According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), October saw the high­est month­ly exe­cu­tion total in Iran since 2007, when the orga­ni­za­tion began doc­u­ment­ing exe­cu­tions. There were at least 166 exe­cu­tions last month, bring­ing the year­ly total to 651 exe­cu­tions over the past 10 months. Of the October exe­cu­tions iden­ti­fied by IHRNGO, only 12%, or 20 exe­cu­tions, were report­ed by offi­cial sources. Eleven Baluch and nine Kurdish peo­ple were among those executed.

As vot­ers across the United States cast their bal­lots on elec­tion day, the Death Penalty Information Center’s July 2024 report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty, pro­vides valu­able con­text on the inter­sec­tion of pol­i­tics and the…

On November 4, 2024, the United States Supreme Courts released its order in the case of Hamm v. Smith, 604 U.S. ​​_​(2024). The peti­tion for cer­tio­rari, filed by the State of Alabama last year, involved a pris­on­er named Joseph Clifton Smith whose death sen­tence was vacat­ed in 2021 after a United States dis­trict court found he had intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Mr. Smith had tak­en five IQ tests, four of which placed his IQ in the low- to mid-70s, the range gen­er­al­ly accepted by…

Image of Richard Moore, courtesy…

Kentucky…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to share a pow­er­ful new resource illus­trat­ing the dire con­se­quences of inad­e­quate legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es: a data­base of cas­es that were dis­missed because they were not filed by the statu­to­ry dead­line. The list of cas­es, devel­oped by Professor Eric M. Freedman (pic­tured) and law stu­dent Paul Sessa of Hofstra University School of Law, will be updat­ed by DPI going for­ward. Mr. Sessa and Professor Freedman…

“If you are charged with cap­i­tal mur­der … you are less like­ly to get…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

Derrick Dearman first told his moth­er that he want­ed to die when he was four years old. On October 17, he was exe­cut­ed by the state of Alabama, becom­ing the 20^th per­son exe­cut­ed in the United States this year and the 165^th in the mod­ern era to​“vol­un­teer” for death. A new analy­sis by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that despite falling rates of death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty, the num­ber of death-sentenced prisoners…